CELEBRATED WITCHES.
The best-known names seem to have been merely nicknames, given perhaps to more than one old woman. ‘Blue-eye’ (Gorm-shùil) is said to originate from the witch having one eye black or brown and the other blue. It is, however, a corruption of Gormla, an ancient and pretty Gaelic name, usually rendered Dorothy. Gormla Mhòr from Meigh, Lochaber, was stronger than all the witches of Mull, and gave the finishing stroke, as already detailed, to Capt. Forrest’s ship. She met her death when astraddle on a mountain stream, to intercept a salmon that had made its way up to spawn. A large fish made a rush, knocked her backwards in the water, and drowned her. There was a Gormshuil in the village of Hianish, Tiree, a most notorious local witch, and one in Cràcaig in Skye, equally notorious. ‘Brindled-Headless-Stocking Foot’ (Cas a mhogain riabhaich) and ‘Rough Foot-gear, the Herdsman’s daughter’ (Caiseart gharbh ni’n an Aodhair) were anywhere but where the person who is telling about them comes from himself. Shaw, the Lochnell bard, makes them sisters dwelling in Glenforsa in Mull, when Ossian was a little boy, and contemporaries of Mac-Rùsluin. ‘Sallow Spot’ (Ball Odhar) was from Kintra (Ceann-trà) in Ardnamurchan; ‘Yellow Claws’ (Spòga buidhe) from Maligeir on the east side of Skye; Doideag-un is the well-known name of the Mull witches, and is given by children to the falling snowflakes, which they are informed are the Mull witches on their journey through the air. Big Kate MacIntyre in Fort-William was extensively known some forty years ago as a person skilled in divinations and possessing mysterious powers.